Is This Animated Film Something to ‘Sing’ About?

Today we saw animated box office hit Sing from writer/director Garth Jennings about some animals competing in a talent show.

The film follows a Koala bear called Buster Moon (Voiced by Matthew McConaughey) who owns a failing theatre and is desperate to put on one big show to save it from closure.

With the popularity of talent shows on TV, he believes that by putting one on in his theatre it could bring the audience the old building needs. To raise interest, he offers a $1000 prize to the winner, but his aging iguana assistant Karen Crawly (voiced by Jennings) has a mishap with her glass eye, results in the posters going out with a $100,000 prize fund.

Of course , this makes for a huge turnout. This follows some memorable auditions with an array of popular songs covered from snails and lobsters to buffalos and giraffes.

Buster narrows his list down to Rosita (Reese Witherspoon) a talented pig singer, looking for something to have for her own, when the rest of her life is serving her 25 piglet children and being neglected by her workaholic husband, Norman (Nick Offerman) Rosita is teamed up with a much bigger stage presence in Gunther (Nick Kroll)

Also joining the final line-up is Ash (Scarlett Johansson) a porcupine, who gets her chance to go solo, if she leaves her boyfriend’s band. A mouse who sings and plays sax to mainly rat pack numbers in Mike (Seth MacFarlane)

Completing the line up are Johnny (Taron Egerton) a gorilla who dreams of being a singer but his father, Big Daddy (Peter Serafinowicz) wants him to follow his footsteps of a criminal life and Meena (Tori Kelly) a painfully shy elephant who if she can sing in public will share a truly great voice.

We follow them all and their various highs and lows, Rosita learning to dance; Ash dealing with relationship issues; Mike getting in debt due to his arrogance that he will win the contest and Johnny making a decision that will see his dad caught for his crimes as he learns to play piano.

Buster also shows how he tries to run the theatre on a budget, and his attempts to secure much needed funding from his sheep business partner Eddie (John C Mc.Ginley) and his talented sheep grandmother Nana Noodleman (Jennifer Saunders)

The film is colourful and a lot of fun,. It has a great and varied soundtrack with the likes of Frank Sinatra to modern day singers like Taylor Swift but the only issue we have is it just wasn’t very original. Animals joining together and saving a theatre has been done just as well by the Muppets.

If you like animated films, this is a great fun watch and you will enjoy it but we have enjoyed other animated films a lot more. A sequel has recently been announced but we are unsure where they can go with it!

A fun and colourful film about animals saving a theatre from closure would have been a lot better, had we not felt we had seen the Muppets do this story already! It is still a fun watch with a great soundtrack covering all genres – 3 Popcorns